Anyone here ever play D1 b-ball? Or close? Or play at a decent level? Have a Q about the greene locker rm incident



  • Having never been part of a team past say middle school, Just wanted to get perspective on Brannen’ locker room argument/tirade/face-off with Self. someone here who has spent time playing competitive ball and could provide some insights, or has seen something like this?



  • Played NAIA ball for a year. Then I just fell out of love for it as it wasn’t a game any more for me and more of a job.

    Love the game now. Again. It took a few years to get over.

    As for wanting more playing time as a player it’s something we all want. You can work hard and not get it if there are guys above you that do one thing better than you.

    Normally you talk to the coach one on one before the season starts. He has notes about you, pluses and minuses. You as a player ask what it’s going to take to get on the floor. He tells you exactly what you need to do and who is I. Front of you and why.

    After practices start before the first game as a player you might feel that you’ve done what was asked if you and more. You may even speak to the coach in his office one on one or with an assistant or two in there as well.

    After a game or two and you still aren’t getting what you believe is adequate playing time the time and place for that conversation is after film and notes and behind closed doors.

    You don’t call out an assistant or head coach in front of the team. EVER. You can talk to your teammates about it and vent, that’s what builds a brotherhood. But you don’t call out the coach no matter what.

    If this is what transpired and who knows what was said or how it was taken this is probably ky why BG is out 6 games.

    For those that want to compare it to Traylor’s deal or any other players those were their first infractions as far as I know. This seems to be a yearly deal with BG.

    It’s not comparable to “Snacks” as he’s a coach and is held in a different light than a player.

    This is just my opinion on my experiences. It’s like as an adult you do as the police officer says and things go smoothly. You question the officer or argue well that incident now becomes an ordeal. Same with your coach.



  • @Bosthawk Entitlement combined with frustration and a lack of common sense.

    Until a major ankle injury ended my football career, I was a D1 football recruit. Mostly FCS schools with a couple of Sun Belt and C-USA programs, but mostly Southland Conference programs. When you’re at that level as an athlete, you’re used to being the best player on the field/court and when you start competing at the D1 level, you’re no longer the best and some people handle that better than others. Greene doesn’t appear to be someone who has handled that transition very well.


  • Banned

    @Texas-Hawk-10

    I’m a firm believer HCBS is just as guilty as Greene. Yes Greene was wrong and must pay the price. Not sure a six game ban is fair, but I don’t know what was exactly said, or what happened.

    Yet that doesn’t excuse HCBS from recruiting a player he has no plans of using and doesn’t appreciate they very thing he can do. Shooting the three. It was the same thing with White. Yet White was smart enough to know it was time to leave. It was a smart move for him as he is starting to excel and light it up.



  • When the parents of the player have to be called to the locker room, I would thing it was pretty dang serious. Greene’s father did not appear to complain about the suspension.

    I played varsity sport in college and I know that if you have an issue, you take it up with the coach in his office and behind closed doors; back then, if you mouthed off to the coach like apparently Green did, you were off the team for good…but then, I did not play a major sport at a big program.



  • I played various sports in HS but not basketball. Football, tennis, track.

    I had a little different situation than BG while on the HS football team. I was ready to have a kick-butt junior year and then in a full-contact scrimmage I nailed our all-state running back in the backfield and broke his ankle. Just so happened he was the coach’s son and was projected to be a star running back for Notre Dame. I ended our chances at a state title that day, along with knocking down our RBs football to a lessor university. Our head coach “piled on” me by putting me on meat squad every day and refused to let me play wide receiver where I could have really killed it. I grew up with our QB and played catch every day with him… so we had the magic connection. And I was, by far, the fastest player on our team and would run wind sprints with the backs and receivers and would run the last 10 yards backwards and still beat them by several yards.

    I finally got sick of meat squad and no opportunity so I took my pads and knocked on our HC’s door. The entire team came up and listened on the other side of the door while I reamed his arse and told him wear to shove my pads. It really sucked… and I felt bad for all my bros who also had high hopes of winning state that year. And it felt terrible about our star back who lost out on potentially playing at Notre Dame and maybe even going further.

    This was my final blow for school sports. The politics… the BS.

    So I built a team to play city basketball and we also became a tournament team and traveled around the Midwest playing in tournaments. That was in HS and extended on into my first couple years of college.

    Ended up in Europe with a sports business and played some semi-pro ball on the second tier. “Semi-pro” typically meant food and travel expenses. I already had my occupation as my bread winner.

    From my experiences, BG should only have addressed this in private. If a coach would let this slide, pretty soon every guy is harping about PT in front of everyone else.

    Most guys I played with always respected our coaches. Even I respected the coach I told to “shove it.” I could have done him that way in front of the team hoping to make him look bad, but I didn’t want to be anymore than an arsehole I already was. I was treated unfairly and no one felt worse about it than me.

    The more a guy plays the more a guy learns to respect the system. I respected the system. Players and coaches can fight sometimes. Nothing wrong with that. But how it is done is what matters.



  • thanks guys - very good stories and great perspective. Good to know the sports backgrounds of some of the regular poster on here, and the more human side of behind the scenes dynamics. (although I think Jaybate is part cyborg or a test computer program at MIT 🙂



  • @Bosthawk said:

    thanks guys - (although I think Jaybate is part cyborg or a test computer program at MIT)

    “Shall we play a game”

    Wonder is the J in @jaybate-1.0 is for Joshua??



  • @drgnslayr Bill Freeman called it the “hamburger line” when we played for him…it was NOT FUN, Once a guy called him out to go in the shower room to work it out & emerged thereafter with visible injuries they described as a fall. Yeah right. Also saw a kid sucker punch a smaller but 30 year older BB coach & then was popped back a couple of times in self defense & then retreated promptly ending with a school suspension. That guys Dad was actually a minister. Those events were back iin the 60’s. They would be exposed so fast now it would be the end for a coach before the day was over. If BG was so out of control his parents were involved this may very well be the end for him at KU.



  • The deal with BG seems totally ok with me. Driven young persons put under great stress sometimes explode in ways they learn from and so avoid later. BG will be fine. Brady was fine after he made his mistake. Mario Little was exemplary after his mistake. BG wouldn’t be worth a damn if he didn’t explode sooner or late about the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune. Self is a teacher and a coach. They thrives on tempering the steel of such young men. One day BG WILL PLAY GREAT AND WILL GROW UP AND HELP A YOUNG MAN WITH SAME KIND OF COMPETITIVE FIRE!

    This is really what sports was about before the money got into it.

    Teaching young men with fire to harness it.

    Bill will never quit on BG if BG won’t quit on Bill.



  • @jaybate-1.0 I like your last line, in my cute lil way!😉



  • While in college, I had an assignment that I worked my butt off to prepare. When I presented it, following several others who were horrible, I was the one who was given a scathing review by this older female Phd. When she was through, I said to her that I thought that my presentation had been the best of all of them. She said it was. I asked her why the others escaped her wrath and that she had singled me out. She told me because I really cared and that she did to. With all my heart, I believe that Coach really cares about his players. When I played basketball, I had an assistant coach that called me every name in the book and humiliated me at every turn in practice, even after he made me a starter. I complained to everyone who would listen to me. I didn’t see that I had become a better player and methods of teaching can be disputed, but results can’t be. Think of Latrell Sprewell choking P.J. Carlisimo, Think of Bobby knight and the loyalty his national championship teams have for him and wonder how that could happen when he throws a chair and chokes a player. I’ve seen high school football coaches grab a kids facemask and throw them to the ground. There are the John Wooden’s that win national championships and there are the Bobby Knight’s. I’m sure that all of the KU coaches have worked individually on BG’s defense. He wants the five on the floor that give him the best chance to win now. That’s who he is, and he’s the boss. Many say that they would be willing to lose if a Freshman could get more playing time or a good shooter just was given several games to learn how to get open, or let a skinny big man play through their mistakes. You’ve got to dance with the one who brung you, and the one that brung you to the dance is Bill Self. I have a feeling though, that if he did do what you’ve screamed at him to do and they lost, the screaming and blaming would only be louder.



  • Hmm I guess this isn’t your traditional sport but here it goes. I was part of a Tae Kwon Do sparring tournament team back in HS. Before a tournament, our rule was you have to be exactly at, or under your respective weight class, a week before tournament day. Our most talented student weighed in 1 lb over. My master at that time said he was allowed to travel to LA but will not be competing. The student decided to throw a fit in front of a full class, in front of all the students parents. Of course with TKD being all about respect, my master threw him out of the school and told him never to return. After class, my master took his parents in his office, wrote a check to refund the remainder of his contract with the school, no questions asked. As someone who has taught in many different Tae Kwon Do schools, it is incredibly rare for one to give a refund without fighting for it, let alone giving a refund no questions asked. I can only imagine how POed he was to even do that.

    That student quit TKD for a few years and was never given another opportunity to compete nationally again. That student happens to my be cousin, who I still talk to. He said his biggest regret in life was that day he lost his cool. It truly was sad to see someone so physically gifted, yet could never grasp the mental aspects of the art.



  • Three winning coaches with different methods. One choked his players. One got choked by his player and one, never choked.

    collage.jpg



  • This whole BG situation just sounds like “tough love.”

    It is quite possible that Self has a lot of love for BG, So much that he won’t let him skate through his playing days only putting in a half-ass effort and leaving his potential to his dreams only.

    Without question, Self has been pushing BG. We saw it start this year a few months ago when Self talking about players “not getting it” and it was clear BG was the target for that comment.

    Sometimes… this is what it takes to break a mule. You have to be strict and be willing to use heavy discipline to free up the attitude so improvements can be made.

    I would respect BG’s side more if I saw him working hard to improve himself.

    This is the difference I see between BG and AW3. We could see AW3s progress… both in his body and in his game. I have a lot of respect for AW3 and what he had to deal with. It didn’t seem fair, but AW3 had a lot of competition for PT and he didn’t have the shot BG has.

    Because of the AW3 situation, I’m not sure there is a life line available for BG. He should figure out his path between now and Christmas. He can transfer and still have 1 1/2 seasons for another school… plenty of time to integrate and get far enough to perhaps catch the eye of some NBA scouts.



  • @drgnslayr are you sure about the half? Cf quit before we started playing, I think bg loses the half.


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